So, I just finished installing wordpress to a subdomain on a Godaddy Windows shared hosting account. That was Fun {insert your own expletive}!

Before I forget, this is the first blog post for Shadowsoft; welcome and I hope you will find it useful. In addition to programming and web design subjects, I also enjoy ranting about the American political system from time to time.

As you may surmise, this blog is hosted on a windows server, so I figured the install process would be the topic of my first post.

 In the spirit of measuring twice and cutting once, I spent some time researching the topic to make sure there would be no pitfalls with Windows, Godaddy or installing to a sub domain. If I was brave, I could have damned the torpedoes and tried the Godaddy hosting connection quick install. It didn’t take much time to realize that this wouldn’t have worked, so I started researching a manual  WordPress installation.

Here is  as summary of the wonderful advice that I found offered on this subject:

• Get your head examined and stop using Godaddy as a host.
• Switch to a Linux account and stop wasting everybody’s time.
• Windows sucks.
• Call Godaddy support.
• Don’t call Godaddy, their support is useless.

Thankfully, I did not mention that the blog’s parent site was written in Visual Basic; the C# people would have joined in with the tar and feathers!

WordPress Maual Install

Create a MySQL Database for WordPress

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. From the Products section, click Web Hosting.
3. Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Launch.
4. In the Databases section of the Hosting Control Center, click the MySQL icon.
5. Click Create New Database.
6. Enter a description, WordPress for instance.
7. Enter a user name and password.
8. Specify your MySQL version.
9. Specify whether you want to allow Direct Database Access.
10. Verify your MySQL database settings. If everything looks OK, click OK.

It may take a few minutes to create your database. Click your browser’s Refresh button to check if your database is ready.

Once you have set up a database for your account, you can find your host name information by clicking the Pencil icon next to the name of your database. Note the following items, as they will be needed later in the install process:

• Host Name
• Database Name
• Database User Name

Now, you need to download the latest version of WordPress from their servers. This can be found at WordPress.org.

Install WordPress

Unzip the file from WordPress, and then upload the contents of the wordpress folder to your hosting account using an FTP client. This directory can be stored anywhere in your account, in this example it will be in the root (http://www.coolexample.com).

NOTE: Do not upload the wordpress folder itself, only its contents.

1. Begin the WordPress installation by going to http://www.coolexample.com/wp-admin/install.php.
2. Click Create a Configuration File.
3. Click Let’s go!.
4. Complete the following fields, and then click Submit:
   • Database Name — Enter your database’s name.
   • User Name — Enter your database’s name.
   • Password — Enter your database’s password.
   • Database Host — Enter your database’s Host Name.
   • Table Prefix — Do not modify this field, unless you want to run multiple WordPress installations.
5. Click Run the install.
6. Complete the on-screen fields for your blog’s details, and then click Install WordPress

TROUBLESHOOTING

If you receive error 500 after running wp-admin/install.php, try the following:

Manually create wp-config.php

This file, wp-config.php, does not exist in a downloaded copy of WordPress; you need to create it. The wp-config-sample.php file is provided as an example to work from. Rename the file to wp-config.php and change the following information:

Database Name  Database Name (from the MySql install above)

Database Username Username used to access Database

Database Password Password used by Username to access Database

Database Host The hostname of your Database Server

Verify the following:

1. Verify you are running IIS 7. You probably wont get it to run on IIS 6.
2. Verify that your install folder is set as Application Root and “anonymous access” is checked.
3. In Hosting Control Center > Content > File Manager, select your install folder, click on “Permissions” and uncheck Inherit. Then check “Read”, “Write” and “Reset all children to inherit”.
4. In Content > IIS Management, select the Content Root folder and then click “Advanced”. Make sure pipeline mode is set to ‘Integrated”.
5. In Content > Add On Languages, verify you are are running .Net Runtime 2.0/3/0/3.5 and PHP 5.x.

Show the error 500 details:

Add the following section to your web.config file

<system.webServer>
     <asp scriptErrorSentToBrowser=”true”/>
     <httpErrors errorMode=”Detailed”/>
</system.webServer>